sense, candy. >> governor pawlenty, thank you so much for joining us here today. appreciate your time. >> you're welcome. thanks for having me. next week, more with tim pawlenty on his chances in iowa and feelings about michele bachmann. thanks for watching "state of the union," i'm candy crowley. up next for the viewers here in united states, "fareed zakaria united states, "fareed zakaria gps." -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com this is "fareed zakaria: gpsp gps," trgps," thp gpgp. welcopwelcome to owl you ars pin the united states and a the world. i'm fareed zakaria. we have a terrific show planned for you today. you've probably heard enough about the debt ceiling. we are going to talk about what else is going on in the world with two distinguished experts. then what is the first and only arab nation to approve a new constitution with significant reforms since the arab spring began? morocco. we'll talk to that nation's foreign minister about what

seems like a success story. next up, hanging together. we'll take you deep inside the relationship of this odd couple. why castro and chavez will likely be friends till the end. finally, an opportunity to hear from one of the greatest historians writing today. david mccullough gives us perspective on the nation's current political problems, president obama, and the american mood. first, here is "my take." watching the extraordinary polarization in washington today, many people have pointed the finger at the tea party. it's ideologically extreme, refuses to compromise and cares more about purity than problem solving. i happen to agree with much of that critique, but it doesn't really answer the question why has the tea party become so prominent? why is it able to dominate washington? we've had plenty of ideologically charged movements come to washington before. think about barry goldwater or

george mcgovern. but once in washington the system encouraged compromise and governance. but over the last few decades, what has changed are the rules organizing american politics. and they now encourage small interest groups, including ideologically charged once, to capture major political parties as well as congress itself. call it political narrow casting. here are some examples. redistricting has created safe seats so that for most house members, their only concern is a challenge from the right for republicans and the left for democrats. the incentive is to pander to the base, not the center. party primaries have been taken over by small groups of activists who push even popular senators to extreme positions. in utah, for example, 3,500 conservative activists managed to take the well-regarded senator robert bennett off the ballot. gop senators like match and mccain have moved farther to the right hoping to stave off similar assaults. changes in congressional rules

have made it far more difficult to enact large, compromised legislation. in the wake of the watergate scandal, sunshine rules were put into place that required open committee meetings and recorded votes. the purpose was to make congress more open and responsive. so it has become to lobbyists, money, and special interests, because they're the people that watch every vote and mobilize opposition to any withdrawal of subsidies or tax breaks. political polarization has been fueled by a new media which has also narrow cast. representative darrell issa, republican of california, gave an interview to the "wall street journal" in which he suggested he might further the conservative agenda through an occasional compromise. that provoked a tirade from rush limbaugh, which then produced a torrent of angry e-mails and phone calls to issa's office. issa quickly and publicly apologized to limbaugh and promised only opposition to obama. multiply that example a thousand fold and you have the daily dynamic of congress.

it's depressing. but the fact that our politics are the result of these structural shifts means they can be changed. mickey edwards, a republican and former house member from oklahoma, has a highly intelligent essay in "atlantic" magazine suggesting a series of reforms that could make a difference. some are large scale, and others are seemingly small, crucial changes in congressional procedure. the essay is on or website. read it. some political scientists long hoped american parties would become more ideologically pure and co-herein, like european parties. they seem to have gotten their wish, and the result is abyss sal. here is why. america does not have a parliamentary system like europe's in which one party takes control of all levers of political power, executive and legislative, enacts its agenda, then goes back to the voters. power in the united states is shared by a set of institutions

with overlapping authorities -- congress, the presidency. people have to cooperate for the system to work. the tea party venerates the founding fathers. it should note that the one thing on which they all agreed was that adversarial political parties were bad for the american republic. let's get started. here to discuss what's been going on in the world while we've been focused on debt ceilings but also shaving cream pies, two guests who have worked at the highest levels of foreign policy and now write about it and think about it. anne-marie slaughter, the former director of policy planning for the u.s. state department, now teaches at princeton. gideon rose is the editor of "foreign affairs." he also served on the national security council during the clinton administration. welcome, both. anne-marie, let's start with libya because it feels like the stalemate continues, but can it just keep going on forever? >> i don't think so.

i actually think we are moving slowly toward a resolution, but i think when you think about libya, you have to ask yourself constantly where would we have been if we hadn't intervened? the answer is gadhafi would have crushed the opposition. there would have been a clear example of how to do that by force, and the u.s. would have stood by notwithstanding appeals from the entire arab world which would have sent signals to yemen, to syria, that would be much worse. >> i don't buy that. first of all, that same exact thing you said played out in bahrain and nobody cared. although what happened in libya, and we are moving towards something else, no one has any clue at this point what the something else is. i agree with you that the stalemate will ultimately end and ultimately gadhafi will go. that's only going to be the start of the interesting questions and frankly a lot of the problems. this is going to last a lot longer and get a lot more complicated than anyone is predicting. >> gideon, what we did in libya

is driving what we have to do in syria. if we hadn't intervened in libya we wouldn't have nearly as much pressure on us to actually have to stand with the protesters in syria, which in my view is the right thing to do. >> i think just the opposite. >> i know you. >> i think what we're doing in libya is driving what we're doing in syria. everybody is saying god help us, we can't get involved in there. even if assad massacres 150 people we're never going to intervene anymore. we have one ongoing messy difficult intervention so we have to stay on the sidelines in this one. >> no chance. we were never going to use force in syria. >> but why? in syria, a dictator is also massacring his people? >> in syria, a dictator is, although i think somewhat deterred by what we're doing and what others are doing. in libya, we were very clear. we were not going to act unless we were actually requested by the regional organization. that was very important. we were not going into a muslim country without an actual appeal and authorization from other arab states. you're never going to get that for syria. >> let me ask you, you look at

the syrian diplomacy and say that's what we should have done in libya. we would have had less military power and prestige engaged, we could walk away from it more easily. >> in libya, the government would have been able to suppress the rebels. what i would have preferred in libya is, in effect, putting gadhafi back in the cage that he used to be in and letting that be the object lesson rather than intervening directly. >> can i just say one thing about syria? we agree on syria. the one place i would push a little further is we need to be pushing much harder on the other countries in the region. we need to be making clear, wait a minute, you guys are the ones who denounced gadhafi. you're the ones who called for intervention. look what this guy is doing. turkey is playing a constructive role. saudi arabia, if anything, would just as soon he stay in office. egypt is preoccupied. we need to push on other countries in the region to take a role in that contact. >> okay. i want to move on to afghanistan.

you had a very interesting piece in "the new york times" in which you said that the administration should take its cues in terms of its withdraw in afghanistan from nixon and kissinger's withdrawal from vietnam. that is not usually looked upon as a model of success. so explain what you meant. >> nixon and kissinger tried to extricate the united states from the war in vietnam. they knew they weren't going to win. they were going to lose. they tried to tiptoe away and leave the local parties to keep fighting by themselves. it almost worked. but after the u.s. got out, the whole house of cards came falling down because congress wouldn't let the government support saigon because the local parties weren't able to defend themselves and so forth. i think essentially, if the obama administration can tiptoe out of the ground combat in afghanistan while continuing to support the regime in kabul and continuing to bash the enemies and so forth, essentially you could get extrication even as essentially the war continues. that strikes me as the least bad option at this point. >> is that realistic?

>> in your piece you say that the problem is we shouldn't be talking about withdrawal, that we should be doing it. indeed that's what nixon did, he withdrew, but he withdrew under cover of offensive fire. in an optimal world, that's probably right. but you're leaving out, a, the domestic audience and, above all you're leaving out the audience of karzai. obama is trapped. he has to make absolutely clear he's pulling out to let karzai know that we're serious, we are not going to stay and back his regime forever. so he has to either be willing to cut deal to fight corruption in his own country. wherever, we are where we are now. i agree with a lot of what you say except you leave out diplomacy. you don't ever mention the paris peace accords, which were essential to allowing us to be able to withdraw. where i think we need to be in afghanistan is i do think we need to withdraw, but i think we need to be pushing much, much harder on the diplomatic front with afghanistan, pakistan, and

the rest of the region. >> i think a formal accord would be desirable, i agree entirely. even so, it would probably be a fig leaf rather than an actual settlement to the problem there. if we don't get it or can't get it, that shouldn't stop us from going away. >> one of the things you point out in the piece which i thought was very striking was that there was all this opposition and huge intense opposition in this country to the bombing of cambodia because that was seen as crossing an international border. of course, we do that every week now in our drone attacks in pakistan which is it functionally exactly the same thing? pakistan has become a safe haven just as cambodia was and we follow in hot pursuit as it were. >> anyone who's watched a war movie, when you have a tactical retreat, you leave one guy behind to cover and shoot. the other people go away. that's what you have to do militarily on the ground even as we're pulling out our forces, we should be striking hard and aggressively so the enemy can't follow our tracks and come right in.

you're absolutely right, thanks to technology and other factors, you can do much more targeted attacks with drones now that achieve the the same effect, disrupt the staging areas and the base of operation. >> if in the end our use of drones further destabilizes the pakistani government or u.s./pakistani relations, that's actually a greater cost to us than anything that happened in laos or cambodia. >> final word on pakistan. >> the pakistan government isn't happy with us no matter what we do. nobody know what is to do with pakistan. if we present them with a choice as we did essentially with the osama bin laden raid, which is this has to get done, either you do it or we do it. if you don't want us to do it, do it yourself. at the end of the day they'll grumble and be furious. but that may be the least bad option as well. >> gideon rose, anne-marie slaughter, pleasure to have you on. we'll be right back. [ car door closing ] [ man ] ooooch! hot seat! hot! hot! hot!

[ male announcer ] time to check your air conditioning? come to meineke now and get a free ac system check and a free cooler with paid ac service. meineke. we have the coolest customers. monday marked six months since egypt's protesters took to tahrir square. while that country's leader, hosni mubarak was toppled, the wider arab spring has turned into a long summer of attrition in libya, syria and yemen. one country seems to be doing something wrong.

something right. the kingdom of morocco recently approved a new constitution that gave significant freedoms to its people. will these paper promises be fulfilled? morocco is a monarchy with an elected parliament. its foreign minister is taieb fassi fihri. he joins us today. >> thanks for seeing me. >> when you read the constitutional reforms that were approved think by 98% of people in a poll, it sounds as though you're on the road to a constitutional monarchy almost in the european style. the king retains certain powers on paper, but it seems that it is going to be an elected prime minister who will become the working head of government. is that going to actually happen?

>> it will indeed happen because we were prepared for that and because, also, i think that the constitution of morocco is a constitution 2.0. >> you have been reforming for decades. >> for decades and mainly namely since 12 or 15 years. >> how do you ensure that the powers that the king has on paper are not abused, not used excessively? you know what i mean? the king still retains all kinds of -- >> all political parties decide together to maintain two specific functions to his majesty. first as commander of the faithful. the second role as head of state is the possibility to manage the army. our army is professional, not political. but in all other fields, it's open for the competition between political parties. and the head of state -- the head of government, chief of executive will have the possibility to manage the country in terms of orientation, socioeconomic evolution.

>> you talked about the king's role as the commander of the faithful. he is supposed to be a descendant of the prophet, a long lineage of 14 centuries. >> yes. >> what i'm struck by radical islam in your country is even the islamists are moderate by comparison. i mean, your islamist movement is headed by a woman and you are training women preachers. right? >> we are training -- >> the only islamic country i know -- >> exactly. when i talk about the evolution last year before the arab spring, one of the reforms concerned the religious field. and in this context we want to maintain our islam, but we want to avoid that the religions interfere in political issues. >> now, all this must sound very worrying if you were in saudi arabia. people say that the saudi regime

has been trying to both woo and pressure the moroccan government, the jordanian government not to go too fast down a path of reform u not to go too fast down a path of constitutional monarchy. how do you deal with that? >> personally i didn't feel that, sincerely. even the council invites jordan and morocco to join them. >> that's part of the wooing. >> we can interpret also in the different way, is that maybe they want to share with us our own experience in terms of the democratization. i think that it's more strategic, and i hope we will have a strong partnership with the gulf countries, because we need a new arab league. >> morocco has another unusual aspect to it which is that you have had a history of actually friendly relations with jews. >> yes.

>> the king of morocco sheltered 200,000 jews during world war ii. >> exactly. >> with that background, are you hopeful at all that there will be some breakthrough on the arab israeli front. >> morocco plays in that role a long time. and morocco in 1985 decide and express that israel have to exist and to be recognized by all arab countries. we play a role as facilitator, as mediator. we don't have a friend -- a friendship or relation with jews. jews are a component of the moroccan society. this new constitution recognizes that. >> let me ask you, if these reforms are successful, if the constitution is enacted in the way -- and implemented in the way that you say, in all likelihood in a few years there will be an elected prime

minister wielding real power, and your position, the foreign minister, will not be held by a diplomatic -- a diplomat like you but by some politician. >> that's right. it's open. it was open in the past. we see that in many countries naturally the importance of the political legitimacy in the cabinet and the legitimacy of the present people, you're right. >> you're reforming yourself out of a job? >> i hope i will continue to play -- to deliver, to give thanks to my humble experience, the best we can for my country because this country is a splendid country. >> foreign minister, pleasure to have you on. >> thank you very much. thank you so much. and we will be back. introducing the schwab mobile app.

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now for our "what in the

world" segment. what got my attention was the video of these two men, shooting the breeze in their track suits. the man on the left is, of course, fidel castro. he led cuba for 50 years starting in 1959. his pal is hugo chavez, president of venezuela since 1999. this is not just a friendly reunion. chavez is in cuba to undergo chemotherapy for his recently revealed cancer. he could have summoned the best doctors to his home. he was invited to go to a world-class cancer facility in brazil. but he chose havana. cuba as a cheap and surprisingly good health care system. but chavez's attachment to cuba is more than medical. it's political. he's making a statement that he supports the cuban model. unfortunately, that model is crumbling, totally out of sync with the modern world. chavez has gone so far as to

talk of a vena cuba, a merger between two allied states. these kinds of ideas, these two men, that picture are all throwbacks, relics of another area. while much of the region has embraced free markets and free trade, ride a wave of fast growth and rising incomes, vena cuba has lagged behind. brazil grew at nearly 8% last year. the venezuelan economy shrank by 2%. the year before that it contracted by another 3%. that's despite opec announcing this week that venezuela has more proven oil reserves than saudi arabia. people in the most oil-rich nation in the world actually suffer from rolling blackouts thanks to years of bad leadership. mean while, in cuba, the country and its finances are in free fall, surviving only because of venezuela. remember that cuba has been a basket case for decades. but it was sustained by billions in soviet aid.

then in 1991 the soviet union collapsed, havana lost its ideological ally and its major sponsor. the economy contracted by a third and there were dire food and fuel shortages. enter hugo chavez. when he became president, he immediately sought the blessing of his hero, fidel castro. association with castro gave chavpz revolutionary street cred. in return, he's virtually written chavez a blank check. according to a recent study, caracas ships oil to cuba at discounted prices every day, accounting for 60% of the island's oil demand. in total, venezuela's various types of aid to cuba is said to up add up to nearly $5 billion a year. havana returns the favor by sending tens of thousands of doctors and nurses the other way. it doesn't sound like a fair trade. in cuba there are signs the

leadership realizes it need to wean itself off of venezuela's largess. the younger broer, raul, is now president and trying to seek out investment from china, india, and brazil. but structurally not much has changed in cuba since 1991. the island nation is still run on socialist principles that have produced shortages, black markets and mass poverty. imagine what happens to cuba without venezuela's support, and imagine what happens in venezuela if its people begin asking questions about why they suffer one of the world's highest rates of inflation, a contracting economy, one of the worst crime rates despite having more oil than any other nation in the world. one day these two countries will look around, see that latin america is leaving them behind and face the future. so remember these scenes of the two amigos. they might turn out to represent the last hurrah of a dying world.

and we'll be right back. i've known to a greater or lesser degree i think seven presidents. and i don't think i could sleep at night if i knew what they know and had all of that on my shoulders. have time to eat like i should. and the more i focus on everything else, the less time i have to take care of me. that's why i like glucerna shakes. they have slowly digestible carbs to help minimize blood sugar spikes, which can help lower a1c. glucerna products help me keep everything balanced. [ golf clubs clanking ] [ husband ] i'm good! well, almost everything. [ male announcer ] glucerna. delicious shakes and bars. helping people with diabetes find balance. helps defends against occasional constipation, diarrhea, gas and bloating. with three strains of good bacteria to help balance your colon. you had me at "probiotic." [ female announcer ] phillips' colon health.

they might turn out to represent i'm fredricka whitfield in atlanta. here's a check of the top stories.

hundreds of norwegians attended a memorial service at the oslo cathedral today for victims of friday's bloody twin attacks. at least 93 people died in a bombing in downtown oslo, and a mass shooting at a nearby youth camp. the suspect has been identified as a 32-year-old norwegian. police say he told them he acted alone. back in the u.s., house speaker john boehner is holding a conference call with all house republicans three hours from now. he is expected to discuss a deal to raise the debt ceiling. lawmakers want to agree to a plan before 8:00 tonight when asia's financial markets open. a historic day for gay couples in new york. hundreds of them are getting married legally today. new york passed its marriage equality act last month. the state set up a lottery to handle a crush of requests for marriages today. that couple right there are the first to marry today. join me for more news at the top of the hour. "fareed zakaria: gps" continues

in just a moment. one way to gain some insight into the current mess in washington is to step back and get some perspective. i tried to do some of that at the top of the show. i wanted to get deeper historical perspective on the performance of the president and congress. few today understand the past and present of this nation better than david mccullough. he is one of the world's most decorated historians, having won two pulitzer prizes for his biographies of harry truman and john adams. welcome. >> thank you very much. >> we have in the white house a president who clearly is interested in history, a writer himself. how do you think about him? >> i admire him very much, and i think that his time in office presented him with problems such as very few presidents have ever had to address.

and given the complexity and the gravity of those problems, i think he's handled himself very well. my hat goes off to him, my heart goes out to him. who could possibly do that job? no human being is sufficient for that role. it's beyond human capacity. we all ought to want to help him. we all want to help everybody in elected office to do the job the way it ought to be done, to live up to the responsibility. in the old house of representatives chamber in the capitol, what's now statuary hall, over the doorway, there's a figure of cleo, the goddess of history. she's riding in her chariot. on the side of the chariot is a clock, put there way back in the 1830s or earlier. still runs perfectly. she's writing in her book of

history. and the idea was that the representatives would look up to see what time it is now, but they should be reminded that that's just present-day time. what legally matters is what's being written in the book of history. what looks down on congress today? television camera. very different attitude. anytime you have a president in office you have to think, too, as compared to whom? what are the choices we have? who else is there? who else was there in the election? i've known to a greater or lesser degree, i think seven presidents. and i guess what's impressed me most is how different they have been one from another as men, as human beings. and some of those that i like

best as people weren't necessarily the best presidents. and my understanding, i think, of what weighs on their minds is pretty close. i don't think i could sleep at night if i knew what they know and had all of that on my shoulders. i don't know how many people could sleep at night. >> when you look at it, mr. mccullough, what makes a great president? >> the capacity to move the country to do better than it thinks it can with the use of the english language. >> communication is that important? >> the power of the written word, the spoken word, very, very important. an ability to stick to your principles, an ability to work

with people with whom you disagree and may dislike. i try to stress that exceptional presidents are the exception. we can't expect every president to be a great president. it doesn't happen that way. life isn't like that. and you can't predict -- there isn't a type. they come in all shapes and sizes. who would have ever thought that harry truman would be one of our greatest presidents? and there's no question he was. he said, i never forgot where i came from, who i was, and where i would go back to. that's a man who knows exactly who he is. he's not craving this adoration and limelight in order to feel good about himself. he didn't want the job. it was thrust upon him. he did not have the gift of moving the country with words the way fdr did or lincoln did.

and he did not have the physical presence that washington had. i think washington is our greatest president. >> why? >> he set the standards for behavior, integrity and patriotism of the best kind, not the flag-waving kind, but true love of country. all of our best presidents, without exception, have had a sense of history, and i don't think that's coincidental. one of the things that a sense of history gives to a person is not just an appreciation, an understanding of what happened before we came along, but the realization that we, too, are a part of history and we, too, are going to be judged by history. and that's extremely important. today's polls, today's -- tomorrow's headlines are not going to matter. what matters, how will you look, how will this time look in time to come? what cathedrals are we going to

build? we don't ask ourselves that much. >> you're optimistic at the end of the day? >> yes, i am. i'm optimistic in the long run principally because of what i see in the generation of my own children and grandchildren and the students that i meet when i'm lecturing at colleges and universities. i'm distressed, i'm sometimes stunned by how much they don't know about the history of our country. but i know how bright they are. how well-meaning they are, that they want to do the right thing. i agree with you that we're making a grievous error in not accepting these able, talented people who come here for our education opportunities. it's a big mistake. that is the natural resource of all natural resources, the most important of all, what's up here, ideas, ingenuity,

foresight, all of that. training. we ought to be, as canada is being, we ought to be a place they all want to be and come on over, we need you. what would we be without immigration? think of who would never have become an american without immigration. that's who we are, thank goodness. >> powerful words. david mccullough. thank you. we will be right back to talk about a time when america and americans were fascinated by france. david mccullough's new book when we come back. ♪ let me entertain you

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we are back with the historian david mccullough, whose latest book, "the greater journey," is about a wave of 19th century americans who migrated to paris. we think of americans as famously uninterested in the world. we think of america today, and we don't care what's going on in the rest of the world. we don't want to borrow anything from the rest of the world. the americans you're describing seemed fascinated by france. why? >> they craved, craved france, and they weren't anxious to go there because they were disenchanted with our country. they went to find out if the

talent they had was really as strong as people were telling them, and in order to get the training, experience that they could not get here. there were no museums with paintings hanging in them then. there was not one school of architecture in the united states. this is in the 1830s. >> right, right. >> and no way to train as an artist to work in an attaye or get the training that one would need to be a sculptor or a trainer. paris was the medical capital of the world. they went for a multitude of professions and artistic careers. if you were a foreign student in france, in paris, you could go to the sorbonne for nothing, to the ecole, free. imagine if the students who were coming the harvard or yale or stanford were coming here and going free? it was part of the policy of france at the time. so if they could afford to

support themselves, room and board, then they could go to these greatest of institutions. but american medical training, for example, was woefully behind. most doctors in the united states in the '30s, '40s, '50s up through the civil war had never been to medical school. >> the paris you describe is a place that is clearly the center of the world in a sense, and we forget now because the industrial revolution had just begun. so you're describing the last gasp of the great agricultural revolutions, and france was probably the richest country in the world, and paris certainly the center. >> what most people don't realize is paris was the cultural center of the world. and we had -- this city, new york, became the cultural center of the world after world war ii. but paris was also the center for medical education, medical science, science itself, technology. the brooklyn bridge, for

example, stands on an underwater foundation system called caissons developed by french engineers in paris. so the engineer of the brooklyn bridge, washington roebling, went to paris to find out how to do it. and that's why he was able to do it. most americans don't realize that, how much we owed to france. >> i have to go on a tangent here for a second because you wrote a book about the brooklyn bridge. >> i did. >> and here you are talking about the engineer of the brooklyn bridge and what he borrowed from france. how does it stay that fresh in your mind? >> to me the writing of a book is like an experience in life, particularly if it's a powerful experience. you never forget it. some subjects, once i've finished with them, that's it. i have gotten it out of my system. with the brooklyn bridge, there's something about it, i'm still involved. my wife and i take a walk over the bridge every year. we go back and walk through the old neighborhood in brooklyn where we lived when we were first married.

i think it's one of the great accomplishments of our civilization. it's both a work of technology and a work of art, and it stands -- it stands the test of time, both visually and technically. it's a magnificent production. and it also rises up out of what was really a very correct time. much like our own. and the idea of this emblem of affirmation can rise up out of that swamp of the guilded age is to me reassuring and particularly in our time. >> our times, though, do seem more parochial. the people you discuss in the book, they seem so interested in the world and intellectual currents. >> it wasn't cool to be cynical then.

it wasn't cool to be filled with self-pity. one of the -- people often ask me when i'm starting a book what's your theme. particularly some of our academic friends. i have no idea what my theme is. i make up something is to calm them down. but i have no idea. it's one of the reasons i'm writing the book. one of the themes i realized is a theme when i was about halfway through this project is work. we receive such ballyhoo constantly about ease and happiness being synonymous. again and again people were saying on paper in their diaries and letters, i've never worked harder in my life and this is the happiest time in my life. and they're struggling as

augustus. they're struggling with the mundane everyday chores of life. struggling to soar into the blue. as he says. and i think that's emblematic of that generation. >> do you think that we have lost some of the optimism and energy that you saw in the 19th century? >> yes. temporarily. i'm a short range pessimist, long range optimist. i think we'll get through these troubles. we've been through worse. when 9/11 happened, people were saying this is the worst thing we had been through. yes, it was terrible. but by no means was it the worst we had been through. the revolutionary war, the civil war. imagine 600,000 people killed. influenza epidemic. the great depression. these were terrible times.

i think maybe the darkest time was right after pearl harbor. we had no army. half the navy was destroyed. britain was about finished. and churchill came across the atlantic and gave a speech and said we haven't gone this far because we're made of sugar candy. that's the message we need now. >> and that's the kind of historical perspective we all need. thank you very much. we will be right back. somewhere in america, there's a doctor who can peer into the future. there's a nurse who can access in an instant every patient's past. and because the whole hospital's working together, there's a family who can breathe easy, right now. somewhere in america, we've already answered some of the nation's toughest healthcare questions. and the over 60,000 people of siemens are ready to do it again. siemens. answers.

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osama bin laden's burial at sea seemed to cause problems around the world. it was announced this week that the remains would be buried at sea. was it adolph hitler, pal pat, go to cnn.com for ten more questions. while there, check out our website. it's really great. lots of smart interviews and

takes from our favorite experts. also find all our gps shows on it. also follow us on twitter and face book. this week's book of the week is my favorite from david mccome law. it's written and weaves a fascinating story of an ordinary man who became an extraordinary president. this was the book that restored truman's reputation in history. now for the last look. here's a riddle for you. what do you do with 17,000 cans of beer, 4,000 bottles of wine, and 55 cans of alcohol. if you're a fraternity, you'd throw a massive party. but what if you're a muslim country where it's illegal. if you're customs, you'd destroy it as they did this week.

you take the heineken and the wine and you toss it all into a big pit. the correct answer to our gps challenge was "b" rudolph hess was taken up and buried at sea. his grave site had become a place of pilgrimage. before we go, a reminder that words are powerful. on last week's show i called the brazilian football club corinthians small. since then i've had thousands after thousands of message. let me clarify. they have tens of thousands of fans but does not have the revenues or purchasing power of the top european clubs. thatis